【英文】瑞信报告：中国复苏态势良好（38页）

Due to the coronavirus outbreak and stringent social-distancing lockdowns, China Retail sales  suffered the biggest decline on record in 1Q20. However, China has come up with plenty of  stimulus packages to boost consumption at both the central and local levels, such as auto  stimulus packages, voucher handover, the trade-in of automobiles and household appliances. Nevertheless, caution remains given the economic challenges arising from the virus outbreak.  According to a recent survey carried out by CS CQi team, consumers are still cautious on  spending. Compared to February, consumers’ intention to dine out, travel, order food delivery or  buy discretionary goods has seen little change in late March and early April. The share of  respondents planning to purchase a big-ticket item in the next six months slid slightly to 18% in  March. As of 9 April, CQi’s tabulation shows 48 provincial, city or county-level governments  have announced voucher plans, amounting to Rmb6.4 bn in total with a focus on retail, diningout, accommodation and tourism. However, CQi checks of actual spending by the panel  indicated a limited multiplier effect, with the average leverage around 1.2.

Six out of 15 subsectors in total registered positive growth in March. Cereals oils & foodstuffs,  beverage and daily necessities in consumer staples sector grew by 19.2%, 6.3% and 0.3% YoY respectively in March. Besides, medicine and office stationery also performed well with  positive growth at 8.0% and 6.1%. More encouragingly, we observe a decent rebound in most of the subsectors, with overall retail  sales improved by 3.3% in March from the first two months. Six out of 15 experienced a  monthly improvement of over 10 percentage points in March YoY growth compared to 2M20’s  YoY figure, including auto, building & decoration materials, communication equipment, office  stationery, gold & silver jewellery and furniture, with YoY growth rate changing by 18.9%,  16.6%, 15.3%, 15.0%, 11.0% and 10.8% respectively in March from the trough in 2M 20.  Another five subsectors—cereals oils & foodstuffs, medicine, petroleum products, daily  necessities and tobacco & alcohol—also improved by over 5 percentage points from the  previous two months.  However, the catering and apparel sectors deteriorated in March, as government control  measures were still in place and consumers’ concerns over safety still exist. The catering sector (accounting for 11.3% of total retail sales as of end-2019) further slumped to -46.8% YoY in  March from -43.1% in 2M 20 YoY The apparel sector worsened with a plunge of 34.8% YoY in March, a further drop from the 30.9% YoY seen in 2M 20.